The University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences, College of Medicine, Clinical Research Center (CRC) is now in its 17th year of operation and in the fourth year of an approved five-year continuation grant for six in-patient beds. A competitive renewal application has been submitted for the grant years 1981-1986, and a site vsit was held in April. The Clinical Research Center serves as a model unit where qualified investigators from many disciplines may bring clinical investigative projects that have approval from the Institutional Review Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the CRC. The Clinical Research Center is an outstanding facility for clinical investigation where, under the close supervision of a highly trained staff of nurses and laboratory personnel, clinical research that would be impossible on an ordinary hospital ward can be undertaken. The Center provides investigators with the ideal environment in which to seek new therapeutic approaches to disease and to develop innovative and imaginative diagnostic techniques. The teaching mission of the CRC is of great importance since advanced medical education in various subspecialties of medicine and surgery as well as in allied health disciplines is available. Each year a large number of students and house officers are exposed to carefully designed scientific studies involving human subjects and have the opportunity to interact with the scientist-physicians working in the CRC. In the previous grant year, a two-bed outpatient facility which included a small preparatory laboratory was opened; and it added greatly to the usefulness of the Center, taking some of the load off the in-patient facility. Following the transfer of the Bowld Hospital to the University of Tennessee Hospitals, it became ncessary to use the outpatient area for an emergency room, but it is anticipated that a similar facility will be constructed on the same floor as the CRC.